Oils and mixtures of oils have long been used for moisturizing skin. In particular, skin that is dry, wrinkled, or rough is rendered more flexible and smooth to the touch by treatment with oils.
The application of oil, while bringing appreciable softness, a shiny appearance, and a protective effect to the skin, is not fully satisfactory as a cosmetic, owing to problems such as an unpleasant greasy and heavy feel. Further, while oils can deliver hydrophobic active agents into skin, they are limited in their ability to carry hydrophilic active agents.
In order to address these limitations of oil-based compositions, the industry sometimes incorporates oil into water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsions in which surfactants are employed to produce a stable structure of minority phase droplets within a majority phase. The skin feel of an emulsified product is greatly improved compared to that of oil alone, and such a product has the ability to deliver both hydrophilic and hydrophobic ingredients to the skin. The stability of an emulsion affects skin penetration rates of active agents delivered by the product.
Many different water-soluble components can be added to a cosmetic. One class of water-soluble proteins that have been shown to improve skin quality are proteins associated with fish egg hatching. The observation of fish hatchery workers whose hands had exceptional skin quality even with prolonged exposure to cold water was the genesis of the isolation of a new class of proteins associated with hatching fish eggs. Such proteins are detailed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,346,245; U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,866; U.S. Pat. No. 8,992,996; US2011/0280882; WO2011/06434; and US2009/0274770. The proteins associated with the egg hatching process included serine proteases (e.g., zonases), lectins, very acidic proteins (VAPS) and choriolysins. Fish spawn isolate proteins have been included in oil/water emulsion-based cosmetic compositions, although maintaining enzymatic activity through the emulsification process is a technical challenge.
Thus, there exists a need for a non-emulsion, bi-phasic cosmetic composition that can simultaneously deliver aqueous-based and oil-based ingredients to skin. Such a composition should deliver the components of each phase in a way that retains the benefits of each. There further exists a need for such a cosmetic that is essentially free of synthetic cosmetic components that have unintended deleterious effects on the skin and bioaccumulation problems.